The light of day faded from the room quickly as clouds covered the sky, and the church, with its high ceiling and expansive inner space, turned dark. The sound of the harsh wind blowing outside gave the nave a strange sense of calmness, of sanctuary, but there was no safety within that space.
Ranma slowly raised the book in his hand, gripping it in gloved fingers, bringing it up before him until the ones watching him could no longer see anything but a figure clothed in black, whose face was nothing more than a gold cross --to match the silver one on its chest-- and the message Cast in the Name of God stitched on white.
And then he let go.
The book fell to the ground, and not a moment later, the quiet church was filled with the roar of paper streaming into the air as thousands of pages --far more than a book could hold-- flew out of the book from where it landed. Dizzy could only watch in horror as the pages and pages and pages whipped around the priest as if riding on some unseen gale before flying in all directions up, down, around....
In panic, she threw herself to the side as a wave of paper shot toward her, and stared as they passed without slowing, striking the floor and the communion table behind her. And seemed to stick. With dread, she looked back toward the priest, still standing as he had been with his white-gloved hand shielding his face from view. Around him, behind him, sheets of scripture covered the floor.
As if only waiting for her to notice, the many pages still floating through the air burst into even more frantic motion, seeming to multiply even as they moved like a flock of birds, no longer like streams, moving as one toward her. They seemed to fill the air around her completely, and she screamed as they overcame her, battering her left and right with their movements as they swept her along. She didn't know how long it was until it ended, but when it did....
She was lying, huddled on the floor, in darkness.
In the darkness, unseen, Ranma lowered his hand, and he whispered something. The darkness fell away, as above him seven lines of light converged from the sides and corners of the ceiling toward the middle, and as they met, rings of glowing light pulsed outward until they met and bounced from the sides back toward the center again like ripples on the surface of a pond.
Dizzy looked up, and by her sharp vision saw that the rings were words on the pages stuck to the ceiling, gently glowing in turn as the "rings" passed over them, casting strange shadows from the ceiling down to the ground.
She looked back down to the ground.
The pages covered the room, layer upon layer upon sheet upon sheet. They covered the windows and the rafters, the walls, the columns, the rafters, the pews, everywhere she looked, everywhere they were. Over the hardwood floor and the carpeted aisle, the benches and the tables. The entire expanse of the church.
She had never seen such a thing.
The sound of footsteps crunching on paper drew her attention back toward the figure walking toward her, and she shakily drew herself back to her feet with the help of the communion table near her.
She quickly backed against the table, to try to gain what little distance she could.
"And where do you suppose you'll run this time?" Ranma asked.
Another quick look around the hall made plain his point. She couldn't even see the outlines of the doors anymore. He had sealed them inside the church completely, and there was nowhere she could go.
Some little part of her begged for release, with the promise of escape.
Ranma watched as the girl shook. It seemed like she was warring with herself. He took a step forward.
The little part of Dizzy became more urgent. She backed away in fear as the priest kept coming forward, and as he came to within a few steps, at last she accepted.
Darkness poured from her back, down onto the ground until she was standing in a pool of black. Ranma jumped back, far back, as it reached toward him, and watched with idle interest as it slowed, and then solidified into the shape that he was expecting. A tall humanoid, whose face and features were obscured by the dark, ragged cloak and hood that it wore. Two glowing points of red, but this time, the shining light from the words on the ceiling illuminated the creature's face: a black skull, nothing more. A hideous head attached to a hideous body, floating at the girl's side, attached to her by a formless mass of shadow.
"Necron," Dizzy whispered.
"The demon 'Necron', summoned and bound to the world through the body of a young French girl over a decade ago by pagan demonology." Ranma gave the creature a most unimpressed look as he made his recitation. "But what exactly do you think you can do to me?"
The dark figure, Necron, snarled in defiance, and raising a long thin arm, hurled a black axe, sharp and heavy, toward the boy. Ranma stood unmoving as it whistled through the air as it flew past, slamming into the doors behind him, where the double doors would have been if they could be seen.
Dizzy watched in horror as the axe, thrown with considerable force, fell to the ground, having completely failed to pierce the barriers of paper covering the door.
Screaming in anger, and forcing Dizzy to cover her ears to shut out the frightful sound, the demon shifted, and pointed its hands at Ranma. Two thin beams of crimson light shot from them toward the priest, slicing air as he almost casually stepped to the side.
Necron shuddered with suppressed rage, and for a moment there was silence. The next moment, a deep growl resonated through the church. Dizzy fearfully looked up at the now convulsing Necron, and her eyes widened in shock as it, with yet another scream, drew itself upright with a start. From deep within his cloak, the face of some giant creature erupted. The thing, like a wolf's head, oriented on Ranma and opened its maw, and the priest sprang away as a searing column of energy roared toward him, filling the room with the reek of burning flesh and a blinding, unholy glare. Ranma averted his eyes as he continued to run, and the hellish visage twisted around to follow his movement, sending its fiery blast towards him again.
Around the room the priest ran, jumping across pew and aisle as the beam followed, ionizing the air wherever it passed and ripping up clouds of burning paper wherever it hit. From one side of the room to the other and even springing off the walls, until at last the beam faded, and the beast slowly retreated back into the folds of Necron's rags.
The priest and the demon regarded each other from opposite sides of the room. Dizzy dazedly noticed that even where the powerful blast had hit, it had not penetrated the pages that warded the room. It hadn't even so much as moved the pews and tables underneath them.
The priest flickered.
Necron brought down one large claw in defense, and a sickening wet ripping sound resounded through the church. Dizzy stared at the white-gloved hand a mere inch away from her throat that had pierced through Necron's hand as if it was as insubstantial as the darkness it was made of.
Ranma ignored Dizzy's gasp as he determinedly started pushing forward, bringing his grasping fingers ever closer to her neck.
Necron, in a frenzy, raised his other hand and brought it down on top of the boy as if to crush him like a bug.
The boy merely raised his own free hand and, with his arm shielding his head, took the blow full force. Beyond a slight bending of the knees to support his stance, the blow seemed to have no effect.
In great confusion, the demon slammed his claw down again and again, harder each time, and the sound of flesh and bone being struck echoed through the church, accompanied by Necron's fierce growls of frustration. But still to no discernable effect. The priest kept taking the blows against his arm and shoulders, and continued to reach forward toward the girl before him.
It could only last so long before someone's patience ended, and in the end it was Ranma's. Getting nowhere fast, with a burst of effort he ripped his hand from within Necron's, drawing a strange cry of pain from the demon, before passing the same hand through the arm frozen in pain above his head.
Cutting through the wrist.
His adversary... gaped? in shock as its clawed hand fell to the ground with an oddly loud crash, before vanishing in a swirl of shadow. It didn't even stay for the expected scream of pain, but withdrew immediately, the face and the cloak collapsing together into a whorl of black before fading from sight into Dizzy's back.
Ranma looked down at the fearful red eyes staring up at him.
Dizzy started scrambling back.
With a step forward, he grabbed her by the front of her habit and hoisted her to her feet. With one hand holding her still, he raised his other, and that hand --Jesus Christ is in his Heaven-- began to glow with a warm light.
Dizzy could only watch as he brought that hand toward her face....
The air around her exploded, and she watched as a wave of crystal shards blasted the priest away from her, sending him flying away.
A slender arm, pale and glowing with ethereal light, wrapped around her comfortingly, and she turned to see the gentle smile of another, turned warmly toward her.
"Ondine...."
She had the face of an angel, skin glowing white like her body, with radiant robes and long, luminous silver hair falling toward the ground. A sight to soothe the heart and give it hope, and that was what she was doing as she gathered the blue-haired girl in a fond embrace. Dizzy eagerly accepted the gesture, forgetting for a moment where she was.
The sound of rustling paper made her remember again all too soon.
Ranma rose unsteadily to his feet, one hand clutching a dislocated shoulder. His entire left arm, the arm he had held the girl with, was deeply cut in multiple places, and even his left cheek was bleeding from a shallow gash left by the explosion of jagged crystal that had left him in such a state.
Dizzy shrank back at the glare in his blue eyes.
Ondine didn't give the priest a chance to recover. At the wave of her delicate hand and a musical sound from her mouth, the ground beneath the boy erupted, sending scripture flying as a spike of crystal burst from the floor. The boy hurled himself toward the side, and then forced himself to a stop as another spike burst up from where he would have landed. And another where he stood. More and more spikes, columns, upthrusts of crystal again and again, until he was hemmed in tightly on all sides by the unearthly substance. Silence fell as Ondine surveyed her work. The priest standing in a small space in the middle of a prison of crystal, and was well trapped. He had no way of even jumping upward without hitting some angled outcropping.
With a sharp movement, Ranma reset his own shoulder, and squelched a grimace of pain. He regarded the two still standing at the communion table, and frowned. The angel before looked back at him, as if she believed she was already victorious.
Hmph.
The ground around him blazed with light as the ink on pages trapped between crystal and still lying on the ground flared.
Casually ignoring the pain, he raised up his left hand. Wiping a dab of blood from his bleeding left cheek with a finger, he drew a bloody cross on the open palm of his right, and turned it toward the girl.
A roar of crackling flame, and the cross ignited. Holy words burned in response as the flames reached upward and down from his hand, forming a rod of fire that quickly shaped itself into a broadsword. He wrapped his fingers around the hilt, and with a shout, whipped the burning sword over his head in a broad circle all around him. Crystal cracked and melted and exploded outward, until at last the light died down and the sword faded away, and there was nothing more of the prison around the priest than a few broken pieces around his feet.
Not even Ondine could contain her surprise, much less Dizzy.
Ranma moved. Running toward the side, kicking up loose sheets of paper as his feet hit the ground, he charged up the wall and across the ceiling. Ondine, in a panic, tried to counter before he could reach them, conjuring strange creatures from the air and sending them toward him. But he was too quick to be caught by the odd fish-like things, and even the few that discharged beams of light to stun him were somehow repelled by the papers that were flying in his wake.
Dizzy ran forward into the middle of the hall as she tried hopelessly to follow the priest's movement. But he was obscured by both his speed, which even she couldn't follow clearly, and the storm of floating paper that filled the air, which she couldn't see through. Ondine, no more successful than she was, could only cast about in vain as she summoned allies to float and protect them on all sides.
Necron, seeming to have recovered his nerve and from his pain, burst from Dizzy's back. With a roar of anger and a sharp sickle ready in hand, he and Ondine watched the room in every possible direction for the appearance of the foe.
The foe appeared, rushing at them from one end of the room. Both demon and angel faced him; one raising his weapon, the other gesturing with a hand.
And as the dark sickle and the bright crystal shard reached their target, he blurred and vanished.
Ranma, standing behind the blue-haired girl who was still staring in shock, clasped his hands as if in prayer. The hands began to glow again, and still unnoticed, he reached back with one and slashed forward with his fingers curled like talons.
The tips of his fingers shined like tiny stars, leaving thin trails of light hanging in the air as he dragged them down the entire length of Dizzy's unprotected back, slicing into her skin without touching the cloth above it.
They screamed. Necron with a deafening scream of agony. Ondine with a silent scream of distress. Dizzy with a soft scream of despair.
The girl fell backward, and her two companions started to lose form, becoming just featureless bodies of dark and light, until suddenly they both shattered like glass, falling in pieces onto the ground around the girl, tracing the shape of lifeless wings. One of obsidian, one of diamond.
The pages of scripture drifting through the air, hanging from the ceiling, and lying on the floor all flickered with light at once, then faded. One by one, they began to fray, ripping to shreds and falling down onto the ground like leaves from the trees and snow from the sky. Gently floating downward from the ceiling to the floor, filling the air with white.
Ranma fell to his hands and knees, gasping for breath. He glanced towards the girl, lying unmoving, the broken remains of her demon and her angel around her.
A scuffling sound caught his attention, and turned him toward the side. The villagers, who hadn't fled when they had a chance. They were inching toward the girl in disbelief.
A few of them climbed to their feet, screaming something. He couldn't hear, and really it wasn't important. They seemed to be shedding tears though, but again, not important. They ran toward him, still on his knees. If he had to guess, he would assume they were angry about him hurting the girl.
He tried to warn them.
A flash, and thirteen blades of pure light exploded outward from his sides in all directions. They faded a second later, and a few corpses hit the ground. How many? Wasn't really important either. Red started to spread across the pristine white of the paper blanketing the floor. It marred the tableau, but there wasn't anything he could do about it.
He regained his breath, finally, and stood up. He approached the girl, and the sight of her, lying still on the ground like a sleeping angel with her wings open about her, made his breath catch in his throat. It was an exquisite sight.
The sound of choked sobbing reached his ears. He turned and walked toward it, and saw a young woman cradling her child, watching him in fear. He looked down on himself. Nothing out of place, except for the torn clothing and some blood that had fell onto it from the cut on his cheek. He moved toward the two.
The woman screamed something at him; he didn't know what, but it didn't seem kind. A flash of light, and another corpse fell.
The child was crying, but she didn't move away as he approached her. He kneeled so that he could look at her face to face.
"Shh..." He touched Sachi's lips with a gloved finger, and she quieted instantly. "Your parents and neighbors are with God now, so it's all right. Don't cry. Just... close your eyes."
With a kind smile, he gently caressed the child's cheek.
Outside, rain began to fall.
"For from Him and through Him and for Him are all things. To Him be glory forever, Amen."
Ranma gently placed the child's body on the ground, and turned back toward his target.
She was gone, her wings still lying in pieces on the ground.
He stood in the quiet room, ripped shreds of paper still swirling around him, and quietly walked back down the nave. Giving one more glance back towards the pulpit from where he had spoken so many times, he sighed, removed his trenchcoat from the closet, and slipped out the door.
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(Posted Sun, 19 Feb 2006 14:09)
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